> max frequency There is no such thing, basically core speed is a curve where they get more and more inefficient the faster they run, and the hard frequency li

> max frequency There is no such thing, basically core speed is a curve where they get more and more inefficient the faster they run, and the hard frequency limit is just some arbitrary point on that curve. If a particular HT friendly workload gets more done at a specific clockspeed, that is a significant boost to efficiency even if it uses more power, as clockspeed power usage scales very non linearly towards the top. That being said, I dont think you are wrong. In consumer devices, HT seems like a bad tradeoff for a bigger, more cache heavy core.